Longing and Absence

We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, Shaped to the comfort of the last to go As if to win them back.

I like for you to be still, and you seem far away.

What a woman says to an eager lover, / write it on running water, write it on air.

In a month, in a year, how will we bear that so many seas separate me from you?

If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.

And o’er the hills and far away Beyond their utmost purple rim, Beyond the night, across the day, Through all the world she followed him.

 

Odd how much it hurts when a friend moves away- and leaves behind only silence.

He seems so near, and yet so far.

 

And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always— take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!

 

My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here;

When we two parted

Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me. O, well for the fisherman’s boy, That he shouts with his sister at play! O, well for the sailor lad, That he sings in his boat on the bay! And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O, for the touch of a vanish’d hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!

 

Dear as remember’d kisses after death, And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign’d On lips that are for others; deep as love, Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

 

Lonely men seek companionship. Lonely women sit at home and wait. They never meet.

Never the time and the place And the loved one all together!

Never the time and the place

She only said, ‘My life is dreary,

 

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;

As many farewells as be stars in heaven.

Of course there is nothing the matter with the stars It is my emptiness among them While they drift farther away in the invisible morning.

 

Dans le fond des forêts votre image me suit.

The moon has set, and the Pleiades; it is midnight, and time passes, and I sleep alone.

Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.